How to take a 360 Picture with your Smartphone Camera
If a picture’s worth 1000 words, what’s a photosphere worth?
It Feels like Magic
I’ve been researching and playing with 360 media/VR a lot lately and, despite what you might assume or how overwhelmed you may feel about getting into it, there are some really simple ways to start exploring these new technologies.
The easiest to create is a 360 picture. They are so simple, in fact, that you can actually make and share 360 photospheres with your smartphone — no fancy camera or new software required!
How To Do It
First step is to download the Google Street View app. Go here if you have an iPhone and here if you have an Android. When you first start using it, make sure that you allow access to your camera roll so that you get the original photosphere.
After you have the app downloaded, making the photosphere is actually very easy. The Google Street View app was made to be very intuitive and will walk you through creating a photosphere—all you have to do is point and click using the target(s) provided.
Protip #1: Make sure the focus of the first picture is what you want people to see because it will be what people see until they interact with your 360 photosphere and start moving around.
After you take the first picture you’ll be prompted to aim at targets all around you. Just follow the same point and click for each target.
You’ll end up taking 44 different shots of the scene you’re in, which will then be meshed together by the Google Street View app.
After meshing all of your shots together to create your photosphere, the app should automatically store in your camera roll if you’ve allowed access. If you didn’t, as mentioned above, make sure you change your settings within the app to allow it.
Protip #2: If you ‘Save Image’ the photosphere directly from the GSV app, it will not be processed into a 360 pic. Make sure you allow access to your camera roll.
To share this and have it rendered in 360 format all you have to do is upload it to an application that has the ability to process 360 media. For now, your best bet is probably Facebook.
Something that should be noted is that editing the photo in any manner, even if it’s just a simple touch-up using your phone’s basic editing capabilities, will make it so the photo will not render as a 360 image. I don’t know why, but it just doesn’t work. So you’ll have to go #nf on all your 360 images—at least for now.
Protip #3: Editing the photosphere in any manner, even if it’s just a simple touch-up using your phone’s basic editing capabilities, will make it so the photo will not render as a 360 image.
There are other sites/apps that will render your photosphere in 360, like pocktvr, but they are few and far between until the technology becomes more popular with the general public. And if you‘re trying to get these out to the largest audience possible, I’d recommend Facebook.
What You Can Make
Here are a few of the shots I’ve taken so far. First is the full, composite rendering of the photosphere, followed by the photosphere rendered through Facebook. You’ll have to go directly to Facebook for the 360 experience since Medium doesn’t support 360 rendering yet:
So Simple
See, that wasn’t so hard! Now you can be the cool kid and teach all your friends how to take their first 360 picture and watch their jaws drop in awe at how tech savvy you are! :p
For as simple as these pictures are to make, they can be used to create some really engaging content and experiences. I’m interested to see how brands take advantage of 360 media to engage their audience. But I think even more than that I’m interested to see how people use this new technology to tell stories about their lives.
Protip #4: For added engagement, hide something in the background of the scene and make people to find it. Most people won’t know they need to move the camera initially but telling them to move their phone around to find an easter egg will get them curious.
PS — I’d love to see what y’all make and what you think of the technology after playing around with it! Please share your thoughts and creations in the comments below so we can learn together!!
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I am currently an Experience Designer for R/GA at Google in San Francisco, CA and a guest blogger for InVision.
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